These are the range of answers local law enforcement personnel offered in response to the problem of violent crime in Humboldt County as revealed in startling new data released by the state Department of Justice.

According to “Homicide in California 2018,” Humboldt County had the second highest homicide rate of any county in the state in 2018, excepting Kern County.

Humboldt County — with a January 2018 estimate population of 136,084 — recorded 11 deaths by violent crime, putting it at an 8.1 per capita rate. L.A. County recorded 570 homicides in 2018. But with a population of 10.25 million (in January 2018), the per capita rate puts it at a 5.5. The state’s top spot for homicides, Kern County, recorded 101 homicides at an 11.1 per capita rate for an area of 906,563 people.

Ask county law enforcement officials what their thoughts are on the report and hear a common refrain voiced first by Eureka Police Department Chief Steve Watson: “Even one death’s too many.”

In it, he makes the case that per capita analyses can confuse public perception of a problem like violent crime, making the community believe an area is more dangerous than a “circumspect scrutiny of the data would indicate.” He also acknowledges the argument that the actual crime rate could be higher considering the fact of underreporting when people adopt a “why bother” approach to citing incidences with law enforcement — but this is more common with property crimes.

Humboldt County District Attorney Maggie Fleming also voiced some precaution when reviewing the stats.

“Concerning annual and county-by-county variation in the results, careful interpretation is needed, particularly for smaller counties,” she told the Times-Standard in an email Friday, adding there has been a lot of variation in Humboldt County’s numbers compared to places like Los Angeles County. “In 2018 Humboldt County had a per capita homicide rate about twice the state average, but in some of the last 10 years Humboldt’s rate has been about half the state average. Coverage of data like these often attributes meaningful trends to random variation.”

Regardless of how the numbers fall, violent crime remains an issue in a county where domestic disturbance is rampant, reflecting an overall trend in 2018 in which 45% of victims statewide were killed by a friend or acquaintance and 18.2% by their spouse, parent or child. (31.2% were killed by a stranger.)

The state DOJ website meanwhile reports that “Humboldt County law enforcement agencies responded to at least 8,298 domestic violence-related calls for assistance from 2008-2017.”

According to Watson, in Eureka, two of the three reportable homicides to the DOJ in 2018 — that is, incidences fulfilling the Uniform Crime Reporting criteria for homicide crime as “the willful (non-negligent) killing of one human being by another” — were the result of a domestic disturbance.

In 2018, 39-year-old Astraia Muir died from lacerations wrought upon her head and torso by her 42-year-old husband Matthew Muir who subsequently committed suicide. Sharral Lynne McDonald, 60 at the time of death, was killed by gunshot inside her home intervening in a domestic dispute before 52-year-old gunman Ronald Allen Crossland fled the scene and died by self-inflicted wound.

“Domestic violence should never happen to anyone and it does all too frequently and often goes unreported,” Watson said, noting the difficulty of predicting and preventing violent crime when it goes unaccounted for.

He said people often do not report domestic disturbances for fear of retaliation, of social stigma, of the trauma of broken relationships and of losing financial security.

Illegal drug culture is one prominent cause of violence according to local law enforcement officials.

“I can’t help but think that drugs are definitely a contributing factor to our violent crime rate in the county — whether it’s dealing with marijuana or meth, those two substances have contributed to many of the deaths in the county,” Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal said Wednesday.

He sees stricter enforcement as the primary method to tackle the illegal drug market and stop the violence associated with it.

“And you know that’s why we’re taking a very proactive stance in going after the hard drugs here in the county because of our high overdose rate, our high homicide rate,” Honsal said. “When the homicide rates drop to zero … until that happens we’re gonna still be going after the illegal trade because it may end up saving someone’s life by taking that illegal trade away.”

Watson agreed the “outlaw part of the industry” needs to be “curbed.”

“That alone could make a measurable difference in the reduction of associated violence,” he said, as the illegal drug trade is inherently risky involving a lot of cash flow.

Those entrenched in the underground drug economy are also less likely to report crimes for fear of legal repercussions which increases the chance of violent crime.

“Individual homicides can be the product of many factors, including unpredictable ones such as chance encounters,” Fleming told the Times-Standard in December.

The motives for violent crime can be varied, Watson said. “You look for patterns and trends and if you identify them that can give a law enforcement agency an area to focus on in terms of the need to try to reduce the violence associated with those … factors.”

It can be as simple as an argument gone awry.

In Arcata, the recent death of Taevonne Latimer, 18, who was fatally shot in May in the midst of a botched marijuana transaction, is a case in point, though Arcata Police Chief Brian Ahearn noted this is atypical of violent deaths in the city.

“There are certainly elements of crime in Arcata that might be consistent with some of the more general findings in the report,” Ahearn said, “but I think homicides, especially in Arcata, are very unique and should be analyzed separately from the more global findings of the report looking at the state of California.”

The report finds 32% of homicides in the state where the contributing factor was known were the consequence of an “unspecified argument,” 26.8% were gang-related, 10.7% domestic-violence related and 7.2% “occurred in conjunction with the commission of a rape, robbery, or burglary.”

As local law enforcement findings indicate, drug use, and not simply its illicit trade, is a crucial causal factor to consider in understanding the data.

Fleming speculates the county’s proclivity toward a high homicide rate as it pertains to the statewide average may have something to do with the “relative size of the cannabis industry and relatively high rates of drug and alcohol use.”

According to information she has on nine of the 11 homicides in 2018, Fleming said “two occurred at a cannabis grow, two involved methamphetamine and one was a vehicular homicide.”

Honsal said there was “only one case in 2018 where meth wasn’t a contributing factor involved in the death.”

Watson noted if you’re going to focus on the issue of the drug trade you have to factor in the role of alcohol and drug consumption as well. This consideration is an important supplement to enforcement, according to him.

“It’s not just efforts from an enforcement standpoint to address that,” Watson said, referring to drug-related crimes, “but also tackling the larger problems of addiction and substance abuse.”

Honsal made a similar point, calling for drug treatment and rehabilitation as one facet of the enforcement paradigm.

“I like the fact that in our state we are moving toward rehabilitation efforts, drug treatment,” he said, recognizing mental health support is part of this.

The general consensus among law enforcement officials is the data are mobilizing, if “disturbing” as Honsal put it, and taking proactive steps toward crime prevention is essential.

One strategy, according to Fleming, is vigorous prosecution of those crimes which increase the likelihood of homicide such as carrying a concealed knife or driving under the influence.

“Studies indicate that prospective criminals are less likely to offend when they can be confident of timely, effective prosecution and punishment,” she said. “Therefore, we work hard to complete cases as quickly as possible. Of course, the effectiveness of these strategies depends on other parts of the criminal justice system, particularly judges, juries and courtroom capacity.”

Watson mentioned the importance of making proper gun safety measures to reduce gun violence, for instance.

Firearms are the most common weapons used in homicides, according to statewide trends reported by the DOJ. Nearly 70% of homicides where the weapon was identified involved a firearm. In Humboldt County alone in 2018, seven homicides involved a gunshot wound.

Honsal feels some of the problem stems from broken family relationships, a community-wide issue that requires the support of school districts and foster care agencies.

“There’s a lot of kids that experiment with drugs and alcohol and some people get out of it and others don’t and I think it all has to do with family structure,” Honsal said. “And I think there’s a lot of things that occur with our youth that play a contributing factor and they get down a road that they can’t get off of.”

Ahearn advocated for community engagement and transparency on the part of police, highlighting the importance of establishing ongoing relationships with social service agencies and individuals to build trust between law enforcement and the public.

“Working together helps to reduce the potential for crime to occur,” he said, listing mental health resources, drug treatment, alcohol dependency treatment, medical treatment, food and shelter and economic sustainability as ways “to make sure that we’re doing everything we possibly can to get people the help they need so they are happy and healthy and living the life they aspire to.”

Fleming, humanizing the numbers, hopes the report will motivate improvements in public safety “because the numbers represent so many individual lives lost, so much potential denied, and an immense amount of suffering and grief.”

Rob Peach is the night copy editor for the Times-Standard and regular columnist handling the education beat in Humboldt County. He earned his doctorate in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, in 2018, specializing in race, religion and hip hop. Before entering journalism he was a community college writing instructor in Orange County.